S O S
by bedgebog
Summary: Sawyer & Kate. An expansion of the events of S.O.S.
1. Chapter 1

Title: S.O.S.  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairing: S/K  
Warnings: Mild cursing.  
Status of fic: WIP  
Disclaimer: _Lost_ is not mine!  
Author's Notes: An expansion of the events of S.O.S.

…

She was beautiful. He'd give her that much.

Okay, he'd give her more than that, but only if she forced his hand. She had it too easy with him as it was.

The simple act of her walking toward him made him want to junk his whole damn life and fall to his knees in front of her. He'd put his hands on her hips, look up at that dangerously sweet face, and pledge himself to her.

Lord, if she ever had any idea the romantic nonsense she made him think, she'd eat him alive.

He'd won the rights to his latest reading project from Hurley. The man couldn't bluff to save his life, so _Bad Twin_ was Sawyer's now, and to serve Kate with a little more of the torment she deserved just for being herself, Sawyer pretended to be deeply absorbed in the manuscript.

Kate could see his glee in ignoring her from yards down the beach. Fine. If it was a standoff he wanted, it was a standoff he would get.

She approached, and stood at his airplane seat waiting, hip cocked, until such time as he deigned to raise his head and notice her standing there. She had time. She could wait. In the meanwhile, she allowed herself a slow, appreciative appraisal. If the son of a bitch was just going to sit there, posing, she could for damn sure enjoy it.

A minute passed, and another, and then Frogurt passed by.

"Hey Kate..."

But Neil's request, or greeting, whatever it was, died in his mouth, the victim of a vicious two-headed glare. From a distance, Sawyer and Kate had appeared preoccupied and disconnected, but Frogurt had really interrupted an elaborate flirtation. Frogurt grimaced and limped off, smoking and a bit charred from the explosive impact of the death glare, but happy to have escaped with his life.

Sawyer returned, with great deliberation, to intense scrutiny of his reading material.

Irritated that he was drawing out the charade, Kate kicked Sawyer in the shins.

(That got his attention.)

"Ow! You're so damn violent! What the hell do you want, anyway?"

"Don't you dare squawk at me! You started it!"

"I was sitting here reading, minding my own business--"

"Oh, bite me, Sawyer. Forget it. Enjoy your book. I'm sure it's truly fascinating company."

He watched her spin around, and march to her tent for her bag and a bottle of water, then disappear into the jungle. Another thrilling fruit expedition, no doubt. She was getting an early start. Already sick of Dharma oatmeal for breakfast.

Goddammit.

He felt himself wanting to stand up and greet her five minutes ago. He wanted to say good morning and point out the goosebumps on her arms. He wanted to ask her what brought her to the wrong side of the tracks and watch the corner of her eyes crinkle up.

Was it his pride that always wrecked them, or was it hers? Did the one automatically call up the other? If he let go, would she?

Kate, for her part, could feel an expression of misery harden on her face like a plaster mask. How could she feel so ruined after something so simple and stupid?

In the instant she turned away from him she found that the furrow of her eyebrows had a physical weight that was an actual burden to bear. Her cheek muscles pulled in close to her nose for comfort, and her downturned lips and mouth felt heavy and stiff, as if they were hardening, calcifying. She could only dissuade herself from the expression by physically pushing the pieces of it flat with her hands, literally wiping the feeling off her face. The repairs held for but a moment before misery began reconstruction.

…

Their fights were patterned by now. Their fights were not quite entirely habit, but they were conducted to certain recognized rhythms. Sometimes Kate felt helpless in the face of it. She wanted them to be good and decent to each other--she wanted to be good and decent to _him_--but at every turn, she allowed herself to be provoked by him, for better or worse. And so, safely, they continued to attack each other.

They'd established no such patterns for their reconciliations. They put their backs into the blows they struck against each other, but their reconciliations were altogether passive, or even gentle, if Kate cared to be kind to herself. 

Sawyer and Kate were brave souls, but they both instinctively shied away from the great risk that rose to greet them when they dared to consider the thing between them. Easier to let it control them. Easier to surrender to the worst whims of their relationship than to overrule them and risk exposing the truth of what they felt for each other.

So, when he'd taunted her with the marshal's case, when they'd abandoned each other before the raft launch, when Sawyer had shamelessly used her to get the guns, every time, they simply let it go. They weren't ready to ask for explanations or apologies or to hold anyone accountable. They only knew they needed each other, and that, given the gift of time, they could get each other back.

They had to have each other back.

An affronted Kate had no fundamental right to resist Sawyer. An exiled Sawyer had no privilege that permitted him to repudiate Kate.

And so, every time, they returned to each other.

It was a simple, barbaric system, but so far, driven by their need and the overwhelming realities of the Island, it had worked. By mutual unspoken agreement, they would leave it at that until circumstances forced a change.

…

Two hours after Kate had disappeared into the jungle, Sawyer approached her at her shelter. It was noontime, and Kate was eating lunch. Fruit from the jungle and pistachios from the pallet of food. When she saw him strolling toward her tent, she pulled her knees into her chest and looked away from him, pretending there was something newly fascinating about the hammock that hung near her little dwelling.

"I'm hungry," he said.

Kate composed her face into a grimace of forced tolerance.

"And this is my problem how?"

Sawyer dropped to his knees and leaned in to her, until their faces were side-by-side and all it would take was another inch and he could kiss her cheek. Her eyelashes fluttered as she looked down, waiting for his next words, watching his mouth.

"I need your help, sugar."

He delivered this request with a smile, which meant dimples, which drew her eyes to the gray in his beard. She remembered caressing his cheek while he was unconscious, how it was soft and sharp at once, like the shark's skin she'd once touched on a class trip to the Field Museum in Chicago.

He was a shark, himself, and yet, not so cold-blooded.

"You do not," she said.

"Do too. Where I'm from, food comes from the grocery store and water only comes out of faucets. I'm--"

"You're helpless as a kitten, I'm sure. Didn't you once say something to Jack about being in the wild? Well, wild things adapt or die, so you better adapt, asshole."

"Please?" he asked.

Helpless as a wolverine. She snorted. He was absolutely deadly when he turned on the charm. She smiled at him; the first time all day. Sawyer's closed for just a moment and she heard him exhale a tiny breath through his nose. Relief?

"What do you want anyway? " she asked. "All I've got is the fruit you usually complain about--don't you have stacks and stacks of junk food in your stash now, from the pallet?"

"Help me with the mussels."

"The what?"

"Libby cut her hand pulling mussels off the rocks. I figure she and Tubby might be on to something good and I want in before the rest of these piranhas eat 'em all up. And I want you on my team--I figure this is the kind of thing you're built for, Freckles."

She rolled her eyes, and he chuckled, and they had a silent exchange about all the other things she was built for that he would find worthwhile. She shook her head, indulgently, and he offered her a hand up.

She took it, smiling a foolish, happy smile. She leaned her head back and looked him over. "You're a delinquent and a troublemaker, you know that, right?"

"Aw, come on, Freckles, it'll be fun! A few clams, some cheap-ass white wine, a campfire on a beach--it'll be deceptively like paradise. Close your eyes and you might even think I took you someplace nice."

Disentangling her hand from his, Kate grabbed the makeshift bucket she used in the garden and set off toward the beach.

"Come on, cowboy. Let's get this over with."

Behind her, out of her eye line, Sawyer smiled a smile that might be described, by the uncynical, as almost shy. And then he followed her to the tidepools.

"You've got goosebumps," he said, wondering why the silly girl didn't just put on a different shirt if she was cold.

"Sounds like the making of a new nickname."

"Actually, I'm not really sure _goosebumps_ has the right ring to it. I was actually thinking of testing out _baby_, and seein' if it went over."

"Why don't you save that one for Aaron?"

"Aw, baby, I don't mean nothing by it."

"You sound like a country-fried idiot."

"You love it, baby."

"You sound like Elvis."

"Who doesn't love Elvis?"

"Huge numbers of people who aren't from Tennessee?"

"Everybody loves Elvis, baby."

"Don't call me baby."

With that, she halted at the edge of the water and gripped his bicep. "Hold still," she said, teetering a bit and using him for support as she lifted her right leg up and pulled off one shoe, then lifted her left leg and pulled off its shoe.

He teased her about many things, and there wasn't much about which he wouldn't taunt her, but when she touched him, he made it a point to bite his tongue. Her touching him was a new behavior he strongly wanted to encourage.

Before he'd gone away, they only rarely dared physical contact, and most of those instances were fights or the all-too-infrequent special occasion.

Since he'd returned, they touched frequently: hands found their way onto backs, arms and shoulders brushed against each other, toes that were buried in the sand resurfaced under the arch of another foot.

And she still loved to headbutt him, but it was different now. She'd sneak up on him and gently nudge his shoulder blade or his bicep with her forehead. When she did that, so sweet and gentle and so...them...he wanted to reach back and grab her, but instead he held still, and if he was very lucky, and the stars were aligned, and no one was watching them, she wouldn't pull away after her usual little nod into his shoulder. She'd close her eyes--he'd never seen her face during one of these moments, but he was certain she closed her eyes, because he closed his, too--and she would press her cheek against his back or his arm, the way a cat nuzzled up against a familiar hand.

He found, sometimes, that a few seconds of Kate leaning against him were more memorable and important to him than most of the sex he'd ever had. More than once he caught himself bargaining with the universe, wanting to know the cost of a few more moments of her pressed against his skin.

…

"Katherine, settle down!" She heard those words from her mother more frequently than any other. Well, except for, when she was younger, "Don't talk back."

She was always energetic. It wasn't a choice she made or something she sought, it was simply her nature, and foundational at that. She liked doing three things at once. She dreaded ponderous people and repetitive tasks. She loved her rambles through the world, even though she heard from friends and strangers that her nearly fidgety nature was a trial for them.

Most times, when challenged about it, she felt she couldn't help herself. She was meant to move, meant to inquire, meant to work--and the more the world demanded "relax!" the more she felt that she had to escape the pressure of the command. Even if she wanted to, she thought, she would never be able to stop, and never really understood the pleasure they all took in sitting still.

Until Sawyer. He never insisted that she breathe. He never told her to settle down. He didn't want to chain her up and lock her in. But oddly, when she was with him, she felt serene. Graceful. Relaxed. Peaceful.

It wasn't that he didn't drive her utterly crazy. He did. And he chased her ass incessantly, which really ought to have made her want to run. But it didn't. There was something about him that made her feel secure. And the shape of that feeling was something she barely remembered, barely knew how to call up, but it was something she discovered she had missed terribly, all this time.

"Watch your step, twinkletoes. Slip on these rocks and you'll crack your head open," said Sawyer.

"Sawyer, I know what I'm doing," said Kate.

"Oh, so you've spent a lot of time in tidepools? You some kind of tidepool expert? I go looking for the world's all-time expert in..."

She liked hearing him as much as she liked actually listening to him. The drawl, the way the words sounded different depending on his expression. The way he talked when he was smiling sounded different than it did when he was sneering about the oh-so-many fools he suffered. The route from his mouth to her ears was a well-worn path and a journey that was always familiar and yet never the same.

He told stories about criminals and whores that seemed like they were from another universe, as divorced from everyday life as their strange existence on this strange island. He teased her. He taught her things. She found herself wishing she was back in the world with occasion to use the things he'd told her: how to outsmart the parking meters in Orlando, Florida; how to find foreclosures in San Diego; the location of the best dim sum in Milwaukee. She thought maybe one of the reasons she felt safe with him was that he, in turn, trusted her enough to emerge from behind his well-cultivated redneck exterior and talk to her about things that no red-blooded hillbilly would ever be caught dead understanding: dim sum, for one. She'd never found his Confederate persona particularly convincing in the first place, but she loved it when he gave up the ghost and sheepishly looked at her from under his eyelashes after confessing something as embarrassing and urbane as a love of good Chinese food.

"...there's no shame in it, Freckles. Admit it. You don't know what the hell you're doing."

"It's not like it's so complicated," said Kate.

"Because if you ask me--"

"I didn't ask you Sawyer. You asked me, in fact. I'm helping out your sorry ass."

"If you expand the definition of 'help' to mean sitting around, looking pretty, and making no progress at all in pulling that clam off that there rock--" said Sawyer.

"They're mussels not clams, and you damn well know it. Aw, hey, look, a hermit crab!"

"Okay, Freckles. That's your problem right there. You lack focus."

"Have you ever even seen a hermit crab before?"

"Can't say I'd ever had the pleasure," he said with a wry twist of his mouth.

"Okay, come here, little guy," said Kate, as she reached under one of the slimy, algae-covered rocks near the mussel beds. "Come on, I won't hurt you." Kate wrested the hermit crab, a red animal set snug in a spiral-shaped shell, from its refuge under the rock. Creature in hand, she scooted over to Sawyer.

"What are you doing! It's gonna bite--it has claws for a reason, crazy lady! Put that thing down--"

"Shut it, willya? Look how cute. See, he's coming back out," said Kate, as the crab emerged from his shell.

"Put Sebastian down and back away from the wildlife. Unless we can eat that thing, just leave it be," said Sawyer, eyeing the crab with a hearty helping of suspicion.

"Put your hand out," said Kate.

"Hell no," said Sawyer.

"I can't wrestle you while I'm holding Sebastian, so just do it," said Kate.

"No."

"Yes. Come on. Please. I swear he won't hurt you," said Kate.

With a tortured sigh, Sawyer put his hand out.

"Now hold still," said Kate, "or he won't come out," as she placed the crab in Sawyer's hand.

"And then how will I ever enjoy the miracle of the little hermit crab?"

Kate rested her chin on her knee, and smiled, ever so slightly, as Sawyer made the acquaintance of Sebastian. The crab walked from one end of his palm to the other, and then tried to crawl around to the back of Sawyer's hand. Sawyer tried his damnedest to look bored and put-upon.

"Okay, that was a blast. Get it off me."

"Aw, I think he likes you."

"Kate!"

"Okay, okay, you're excused," as she rescued Sebastian, returned him to his sandy spot underneath a rock and wiped her wet hands on Sawyer's jean-clad thighs.

"What the hell'd ya do that for?"

"Because you never let me name anything."

"What?"

"Well," said Kate. "You're always giving stuff stupid names, and you've never once asked me what I want to call something."

"Okay, fine, what did you want to name him?"

"Um..."

Kate wracked her brain for a better name than Sebastian--there wasn't one--as she set back to work prying away at the mussels that were so firmly clamped onto the rocks.

"And that, my dear, is why you don't get to name anything," said Sawyer.

"Give me a second."

"That ain't how it works, Freckles."

"You're mean," said Kate.

"Hey, at least I ain't attacking you with snapping sea creatures," said Sawyer.

"It didn't bite you!"

"But it wanted to. I could tell."

Kate could only shake her head at this, and smile. He made her smile so big. How did he do that?

So, with Kate grinning at Sawyer, and Sawyer splashing her with seawater to make her stop looking at him like that, so he wouldn't have to kiss her, they went back to work.

…

"Ah ha! That's how it's done!" crowed Sawyer, as he plucked an unwilling mussel from the rocky beige shore where he sat with Kate. As he threw his catch into the bucket, Kate, in turn, pried one of the mollusks off the damp rocks.

"Well, look at you! That's, what, four in the last half-hour? Let me call the Guinness book." Sawyer couldn't resist needling her, especially since he was winning their little match, nine to six. Sawyer was nothing if not a master of trash talk.

"Do you want to help or not? Because I've got better things to do with my time." That drew out Sawyer's dimples--Kate's competitive streak was not to be trifled with. If he pushed her too far she'd dump the whole bucket over his head and not speak to him for hours. Better to let her be.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sawyer saw someone approaching them, walking with a firmness of purpose that could not be mistaken. Dammit. Jack. And he was approaching them with a particular agenda. This was not a courtesy call.

"Oh, happy day. Here comes Dr. Giggles."

Heads up, Freckles. Your boyfriend's back in town. Kate, of course, smiled at the jackass in greeting.

"Hey," said Jack, making a point to avoid looking at Sawyer.

"Hey yourself," said Sawyer, as much to save Freckles from wasting words on the good doctor as to assert his own presence.

The rest of the discussion--about guns and lines and prisoners--was conducted as if by rote. It didn't matter what Sawyer said once Freckles knew she'd been beckoned by the chosen one. The minute Jack asked for her, she was as good as gone, with just a brief glance at what she was leaving behind. Her departure, following along after Jack, reminded Sawyer that the day was overcast and damp, as his perspective suddenly broadened, following her footsteps away from the beach.

Sawyer watched her as she gathered her things, while Jack all but tapped his foot in impatience, and then Sawyer made a point of looking away, looking to mussels and sea stars and urchins and goddamn hermit crabs so he wouldn't have to know if she'd bothered to turn and wave goodbye before she vanished away into the dark, wet trees.


	2. Chapter 2

Sawyer was a lazy bastard, but not half as much a slacker as everyone thought. But that sign? Bernard's S.O.S. sign? It might have made sense back on planet Earth. Here, wherever this was, a sign wasn't gonna do it. They probably didn't even speak English in this freaky part of the galaxy. They weren't getting off this rock until it exploded and threw them all back where they came from. An admirable effort, really, but no way was it worth his time and muscle to build. Let the rest of the survivors occupy themselves with such busywork.

Sawyer was content to treat the Island as some sort of deranged paradise--what was there to do here, really, except lounge? He had only three genuine goals for his time on this place: He wanted to kill them--one of them, at minimum, or all of them, if he was granted the opportunity; he wanted to f--k Kate until she screamed and make love to her until she purred; and he wanted to leave something behind. Damned if he was going to waste any good portion of his life on Pitcairn here and not have it matter.

That was why the recent demolishment of his tent was a good thing in the end. Knock it down and built it back bigger. What did they call those shiny new mansions back in Florida? Starter castles? He'd have one of those by the time he was done here. Before long, when he was more sure they weren't all being punk'd, he'd build something real. Something solid. None of this Hooverville s--t for the long-term. And when they were rescued, or when he was killed, whichever came first, there'd be something left of him here--a chimney, a foundation. More than the memories and mere rags left behind by Shannon and Boone. Damned if he'd be remembered by the contents of his luggage.

But, for now, more floor space. He'd pulled the windows higher up, too, so passers-by could not so easily spot an unexpected sleeping form. Kate had nearly dozed off on his doorstep more than once. Someday she'd give up and crawl inside, instead of dragging herself back to her pathetic little shower-curtain shelter. When that day came, he wanted it so she felt safe...unwatched. She'd told him more than once that she hated to be monitored. Hated the feeling of being judged and picked apart. She didn't have much of a reputation--being a wanted fugitive and all--but hell if he'd drag her down any further. If she ever spent the night at his place, he wanted to protect that choice, not leave it open for public discussion at the morning koffee klatsch.

The palm fronds were to muffle the screaming--and the purring.

…

As the late-afternoon sun danced with the clouds rolling above the island, Sawyer approached Jin. The fisherman sat under a palm tree on the beach, working his way through a large pile of Pacific perch, newly plucked from the sea to feed the ever-hungry survivors of Oceanic Flight 815.

"Hey, Chewie," said Sawyer.

Jin replied him a suspicious look, one that read approximately, "What the heck do you want, bonehead?"

Secure in the knowledge of Sawyer's semi-permanent self-absorption, Jin assumed he would not be called upon to do much during this encounter and continued to gut the giant perch he held in his hands.

"Your mother was a dirty slut, and your father smelt of elderberries," said Sawyer, testing.

Jin replied with a look that read, approximately, "English is still not Korean, bonehead."

Sawyer--satisfied that Jin hadn't secretly become fluent in English, Sun-style--sat down next his fellow raftmate.

"Nice day," said Sawyer.

Jin did not speak.

"The doc doesn't even like her, you know. He doesn't like any of us! I mean, he's decent to the blonde and the dog, but hell, I'm decent to the blonde and the dog, so it's not like that's some great achievement. He just plain doesn't like her as a person. The goddamn doctor thinks she's about as sturdy as a gum wrapper and half as smart. If I were her, and he talked to me the way he talks to her, I'd tell him he was cruisin' for a bruisin' and then skip right to the bruisin'," said Sawyer.

Jin replied to Sawyer's rant with a look which could be interpreted to mean, "Catharsis-much?" (If the interpreter happened to own a particularly good Korean-English dictionary.)

"Exactly!" as Sawyer dug the heel of his boot deep in the sand.

And then, after a long pause, "I kinda miss her."

Jin responded to Sawyer's frown by ripping the intestines out of a fish and throwing them down the beach for the seagulls to enjoy.

Jin asked Sawyer if he wanted to help disembowel the fish and gestured with the knife toward his pile of fresh, ungutted catch.

Sawyer said, "Thanks Chewie. Don't mind if I do," and picked up one of the newly prepared fish filets.

And with that, Sawyer stood up and carried the fish away to his campfire. Jin merely shook his head in response, resigned to his own language barrier and to the intractable problem that was Sawyer.

…

Jack's opacity frustrated her. Maybe it was living this island--seculsion from the world had made her forget how people looked, what their expressions meant. Maybe it was that so much of what they experienced was so big. Mortal terror in the face of ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties; overwhelming joy at the birth of "their" baby, Claire's baby; maybe those feelings were so intense that anything subtle or delicate was simply crushed under the weight of it all.

But Sawyer put the lie to that theory...She understood every word he didn't say.

So why was Jack such a blank? She could read Sawyer. She understood Sun. Even when she was with reserved, undemonstrative John, she felt his warmth and humanity shining through. But Jack? Not so with Jack. She'd posited that they were damaged goods, the both of them, and he'd replied with...nothing?

What was that expression? What had that face meant?

"Kate, look alive."

"What?"

Jack had stopped short in the woods.

"You didn't hit your head when the net dropped, did you?"

"Me? What? No. No, you broke my fall. Thanks," she said, smiling.

"Well, you're acting like you suffered a brain injury. Try to concentrate on what we're doing here, okay," said Jack.

"I was just thinking," said Kate, wondering again what it was, exactly, that they were doing out here.

Jack's intensity was admirable, but she couldn't help but think, "You don't call them, they'll call you." The Others would never emerge from their holes and warrens on Jack's command, if only to prove that they were the ones in control.

"You've got to hydrate," said Jack, handing her the water bottle.

"Right," said Kate, taking a swig.

"Let's go."

"Jack--"

"Come on. We've still got a long way before we hit the line," said Jack

Kate sighed. Fine. Perhaps he'd be more receptive to her theories about communicating with the Others once he got to the line and was roundly ignored by the jungle. She didn't have the energy to throw a tantrum, certainly not one of the magnitude necessary to throw Jack off his chosen path. So she would wait, patiently, until Jack was ready to hear her. Until then, she could only march along behind him and smile secretly to herself, imagining the wonderful fit that Sawyer would be throwing right about now, had he been the one invited along on this little outing. They felt so similarly, so often. He could be her voice at the times when she felt tapped and drained of momentum and power. If only he were here now.

But he wasn't. She'd left him behind to go away with Jack, and that meant she'd have a very testy Tennesseean on her hands when she got home. He would never understand howshe felt about Jack. He would never understand that she felt that Jack, oddly, needed her help.

Jack was so isolated by his goodness, by his astonishing capacity for rendering salvation. He'd always stood alone, fearless, ready to act, while the rest of them could only, barely, react, could only find the strength to do what was right or necessary after he barked a name, once, twice, three times. "Hurley, don't you dare faint on me!" "Kate!"

She'd known since that first day, since that ridiculous day when they'd fallen out of the sky, that she was put on this Island to be Jack's partner. To have his back. To be the person who watched over Jack Shephard as he, in turn, watched over his flock.

Sawyer, with all his impatient jealousy, would never quite understand. She was afraid to try and explain, for fear the words would get tangled and his idea of it would be permanently, irrevocably wrong.

…

He was saving the mussels for dinner. Jin's fish was meant to tide him over, because he couldn't help but think she'd be back at sundown and if he had a pail full of mussels waiting to be cooked, maybe she'd stay with him. If he played dumb, like he had no idea to cook mussels, maybe she'd believe that was why he hadn't eaten them yet.

When he really needed her, or if she really need him, or when they could create a reasonable simulacrum of the same, they were allowed to put aside their endless power struggle and be kind to each other.

Clucking--that's what he called it in his head when fussed over him. He didn't need a mother, hen or otherwise, but if he didn't know better, he might think she enjoyed putting his affairs in order. He'd noticed how much she wanted to do the first night he was back in the camp, after they'd made the long trek from the hatch to the beach. He was exhausted, sure, but by no means incapable of taking care of himself. None of it seemed to matter to Freckles. The proud, cold girl he'd left behind was gone, replaced with some sort of nurse-concubine ready to humor his every whim--well, most of them, anyway--and reluctant to leave his side, no matter how much he provoked her.

That whole first night she'd made like he got shot on purpose, and treated him as he weren't responsible enough to have charge of anything but sitting still. She shooed away the looky-loos, made off with the clothes he'd worn on Ana-Lucia's disastrous remake of the Bataan Death March (allegedly to wash them), kept the fire going, and made him drink so much water that he felt like he'd swallowed a lead balloon. And then she put him to bed and set herself in his chair, curled up but watchful, like a housebound cocker spaniel who fancied herself a Rottweiler.

It was a good time for them. He pretended to need her, she pretended to be a civic-minded young lady volunteering her time with the needy and disabled.

These days, the closest they could come to replicating that period of gentility and kindness was if one or the other could manufacture a new task or errand of such plausible challenge that help might be reasonably needed from the other. So...mussels.

She would help him, because the truth was he did need her. More than any of the rest of the fools on this island. And that truth shone through the layer of lies and feints it was buried under.

That was the funny thing. For all the overproduced melodrama that stood as their relationship, they were both so transparently devoted to each other. Why the hell couldn't they just admit it?

…

It was cool in the jungle. Cold even. The ocean breezes cooled down their beach every night, but somehow the campfires and the company and their jury-rigged shelters kept everyone warm enough. Out in the jungle, in a rainforest rainstorm, there was nowhere to hide that wasn't swamped in water. There was nowhere to turn. It was all wet splinters and sloppy mud and slimy creatures emerging into the drench.

Soaked to the skin, Kate wondered at times like this if Sawyer didn't have the right idea not wearing underwear. And with the staying home.

Jack had been screaming at the top of his lungs for almost an hour now. The bellow with which he'd begun had been worn down to a flat, hoarse bark. He'd cut back to a shorthand, a brief outline of their situation, and stalked back and forth, from the treeline to the black rock that marked the line. Prowling and raging into the air, Jack had become a virtual short course in fanaticism. He was raving in a manner that would make Rasputin proud, and that reminded Kate, oddly, of her mother's lectures on smoking. Funny how Ma had always fought tooth-and-nail against her daughter's briefly held high school habit of smoking but said nothing against her husband's life-long habit of drinking to excess. That was the problem with fanaticism--it lacked perspective.

She was bone tired. Her hands and feet were cold and worse, stiff. Gathering firewood was a nearly unbearable chore. Something about this expedition had worn her out. Her neck and lower back were in a mortal struggle against each other to determine which muscles could draw together tightest and make her the most tense. Rolling her neck in futile attempt to unwind the clench, Kate had a vision of herself in a laudromat the first month she'd been on the lam. Montana. Thunder-black clouds outside. Cold. Alone. Depressed. The kind of depression that felt so bad it didn't even hurt anymore, just stole every good thing out of the air, out of life, and left the sufferer completely bereft of hope or the will to fight. Her body was nearly rigid, but her morale was limp and weak and all-too-close to shredded, like wet tissue. She could not find the strength to express her only wish of the moment: She wanted to go home. She wanted to go home, but Jack's mission was so much more intensely felt than her own. So, she would stay.

But as she always did when trapped somewhere she did not wish to be, she sequestered away her true wishes. She locked them in a room, as she was locked away, and visited when she could.

She wanted to walk into camp and see the fires. She wanted to hear the perpetual party murmur of her friends--gossiping and detouring through the stories of their lives and arguing over the best way to combine the ingredients in their strange larder. She wanted, she admitted in secret, to find Sawyer at his place. She imagined he'd be sitting--waiting--outside, probably risking his eyes even further by reading after dark. If she walked up to him with just the right look on her face he wouldn't fight her when she went into his tent. If she walked up to him with just the right look on her face, he would just drop his book and follow her inside. She loved where he lived. She loved the greed that allowed him--and her, by association and extension--to enjoy so many of the little luxuries that stood out against the background of their castaway poverty: blankets and pillows, first among them. She would earn her keep by stripping in front of him--these miserable clothes could not be shed fast enough. And then she would put on one of his shirts, something he'd worn--something that smelled of his sweat and cologne--and then she'd crawl into his bed and sleep forever. And he would smirk at her until he exhausted the smirk and was forced to admit, by expression, not confession, that he liked her. And even though she was a half-naked woman in his bed, he would leave her be until she was ready for him. Maybe in the morning? Maybe when she woke up beside his warm, hard length. Maybe if she looked at him just the right way, he wouldn't tease her too much, wouldn't make her feel like they were engaged in an perpetual battle and she was always the loser. Maybe he'd just touch her and pull her close--so warm--and nuzzle her neck and press himself against her and nibble her ear and kiss her, like he had so many weeks ago.

"Kate!"

"What?"

"You're still doing that brain damage thing. Let's start this fire. It's getting chilly."

Getting, Jack?

Kate couldn't help but feel a little resentful, to think it was a little unfair for Jack to keep her away from home just so he could commandeer her attention and her Campfire Girl skills on this fool's errand.

Perhaps if she was quiet he'd leave her to return home in dreams. That, perhaps, would keep her warm when the fire--and Jack--left her all too cold.


	3. Chapter 3

Day was coming. Again. Already.

The camp was asleep, and the jungle beyond it. Water waved, in and out, on and off his doorstep, a metronome marking off another minute when Jack didn't tromp into camp, thumping and thunking and sighing his frustrated sigh.

If he stayed here, lying still and staring at the tented sky, he would only know she was back when Jack announced his presence with his usual...expressiveness.

Kate was a cat, never heard to come or go. He'd have to watch to see when she returned, and hell if he was waiting for her to come home.

Jealous.

No.

Yes.

The shock. The affront. The moment the power goes out. The moment the impact of the other car shatters the glass.

He who sneaks up on you while you aren't paying attention, and suddenly, there, in your space and you can defend yourself with nothing but the startle. Someone's been watching. You, unawares, have permitted it.

Kate and him. They were connected. They had been since the beginning. They were playing tug-o-war, tied together, straining against each other. Then Jack. Stepping between then. Slicing the cord. The recoil. The jolt. The strange feeling that bondage was the better option. The fear that the knot untied could not find its way back around and under and through. The everything wish, to be left alone together endlessly, competing with an urge to take the time punish the trespasser, the transgressor. Wipe him out of the way.

If the path were clear, the gates open, the bolts refixed, then they might have a chance to make their way back to each other.

Damn her.

No, never mind her.

She was wasted energy, scattering in every directed.

The guns. The guns were good. Politics was a parlor game, but their enemies were not interested in the why of it all.

"Do or do not. There is no try."

Governments and armies go hand in hand. Some governments run armies, some armies run governments, but they are an inseparable pair, like Siamese twins sharing a lung or a liver.

Speeches and rhetoric were useless without the guns. Guns were good. These people needed the guns.

Same way armed robbers take banks...

If she had any decency at all, she at least wouldn't smile at him. Jack could have the sharp points of her hipbones jutting out from under her skin and her belly button and the curl of her hair over her shoulder, but if there were any mercy or justice...If he got any portion of her at all, he wanted that stupid, goofy grin. The Doc couldn't know how to love her ridiculously big front teeth. She looked like a rabbit when she was happy. Those absurd front teeth. Those were his.

Would he fuck her in the jungle? Was that Jack's style? Did the Doc even have a style? Would she curl up next to him and wait for his hand on her hip, under her shirt, his thumb on her jaw, his palm and fingers on her neck...

Same way armed robbers take banks-because that's where the money is-they would come here. This is where the victims were. Freckles. Moonbeam and Sunshine. Kanga and Roo, with all her cooing and all his gurgling babble. This is where they kept the schoolteacher, and that one that cried a lot, and the skinny one with the implants...so this is where they would come.

Mister Eko knew. He was building that temple to his gods because he knew. He was calling them down, calling in a favor.

None of what they'd built would matter. The neighbors sought flesh and bone. They would come and they would kill what they could, and carry off the rest. They didn't want to make friends or borrow a cup of sugar, they wanted to take all they could reach and burn what remained.

The problem with Freckles, stubborn girl, was that she wouldn't-

Would she fall asleep with him inside her?

Would she fall asleep beside Jack, trusting him to watch the dark?

Would she fall asleep when he told her to, or would she fight for the night's last word, and fall asleep when she merely could stay awake no longer?

Damn them both and their sticky marshmallow goop of a relationship. It made no sense. It had no structure, no form.

This place that he'd come back to after that grim trek through their exile-this place now felt like a beautiful old mansion where a bloody murder-suicide had once taken place. It was gorgeous and haunted, ghosts clung to it, and every corner pointed to the very risk of living. She walked around in here like it was safe, and yet fires raced through it, toothy fish circled it, and the barbarians were coming to sack it.

Ana-Lucia could be thanked, at least, for her true crime tales. She'd lived through the invasions, she'd survived to tell about it. So now they knew. Now they knew.

The guns were there for her. He was the thug, the mercenary. Jack was the purple-hemmed Senator. Locke was the augur, reading the entrails. He was merely the fist of the state, but that was the first thing these people needed. To fight and survive. Civilization was extra credit.

The guns were there for her, because someday, some night, when she was not next to him, not naked and warm and wrapped in a blanket like a bug in a rug...some night they would come.

They would take one look at Freckles, and she would be gone.

The vanity of kings was only another weapon the barbarians could turn against them. The self-proclaimed masters of this universe, this tiny village, they had no privilege to that metal. The right of it came from the taking.

She could walk away. She would walk away. She always did.

But she was going on her own, like a cat, on silent feet, not bruised and frightened, dragged into some foreign city full of vandals and predators, barbarians who would slaver and drool and feast on her flesh.

She would leave him, surely, but at least, above all else, she would not be taken. Not from here. Not from him.

He's almost broken her.

He'd become her friend-someone who knew what she was really like and wanted to know her anyway-and then he was just...leaving.

She'd been near to him, close even, and it only put her in easy reach as a tool to be used in his operation for the guns.

Stupid.

He'd told her, told everyone, that his stranding with their lot was merely unhappy chance. He'd been perfectly clear, all along. Stupid.

She knew, she'd known, he told her. And yet, suddenly, he was going, leaving on the raft. Even the flimiest of pretexts, the flimiest of vessels was good enough to carry him away. She afraid to leave him, and he made that the trick of it all, and when he took the guns he told her what she already knew: She was stupid.

She could barely stand to look at him.

Stupid.

She turned her back. Still, she wanted. Wanted to go where he was going, see what he saw, at least watch him as he walked away.

For all her attraction to him, he could so easily cast her off, with a flick of his wrist, like iron filings shaken from a magnet.

She'd wanted to ask him to stay. She wanted to be someone he was leaving behind.

He'd almost broken her. If they'd crossed paths that last day before the raft, she would have given in.

Stupid.

The ticking clock had broken her down. She was more scared of the alarm than of his disregard. So muddled was she by her unexpected lust that she imagined their time together was notable for him, too, and not just a way to pass otherwise unoccupied hours on an island with no amusements.

Stupid.

Chance and circumstance had saved her before the raft sailed. She wouldn't be so lucky again.

Luck is for the weak.

Stupid.

And yet. His actions, his body, his eyes. Did they put the lie to his words? The bullet in his shoulder. His knee that day in the jungle, when he wasn't stalking her. The look on his face as the Sig Sauer was drilled into her throat. The human being that she knew was in there somewhere-was he closer than she imagined? Could she touch him? Would he let her?

That person was the one she wanted, the hand she imagined holding hers, that strong back, that steady gaze-that was enough, and plenty, too. If he was there, if he was real, if he was someone she could know, then...then they would both survive.

Michael wasn't moving. Jack wasn't speaking. Michael was like a clock with the guts ripped out of it. Just the face and the hands, but no works inside. The works were Walt, and without it-there was nothing.

Sawyer was alive. She could always feel that, no matter where he was. Maybe that was what drew her to him. Maybe she was dead, and he was alive, and if she kept close enough, if she trailed behind him long enough, maybe he would share a little of devil that made him so wicked and wonderful. Maybe her pathetic desire was a message, someone telling her that Sawyer was someone with something to spare, something to share, that a portion could be hers for the taking.

Sawyer.

His name never stopped bouncing around her skull. It was a permanent echo. His name, his face. It was asynchronous, sometimes a steady strum, other times a wild rattle crashing in every direction at once, taking up every other idea she had.

Sawyer.

It wasn't even any one thing she loved about the bastard. It was the everything of him. Not loved, no. Appreciated. Celebrated. Enjoyed.

Sawyer.

What did he want with her anyway? How long would he wait, how long would it take, until her frigid refusals chilled his heat? Sooner was better than later, otherwise someday she would give in, and she would be that stupid girl. The devil would be inside her, and she would never be able to cast him out.

She would be alive again, and soon abandoned. Better to stay dead.

Pour salt water on the gears and springs, beckon rust and stains, break it down.

Walk away from the smell of him, and the taste, or spread your legs, open your heart, wait to be stabbed, and scream.

If she trusted him, she would have to trust herself, and that, above all, must not be permitted.

She would keep walking, running, fleeing, from him, from...life.

She could still get away.

There was still time.

She could still make a break for it.

Every man for himself, and devil take the hindmost. 


End file.
